Pygmalion

DescriptionPygmalion is a 1912 play by George Bernard Shaw, named after a
Greek mythological character of the same name. Professor of phonetics Henry
Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza
Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her
to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he
believes, is impeccable speech. The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British
class system of the day and a commentary on women's independence.